Last Midnight
by prophet-of-troy
Summary: Dumbledore is dead, struck down from the Astronomy Tower by his trusted spy, Severus Snape. What really matters, is the blame. Somebody to blame, and Harry and the Order have chosen Snape. Only Hermione is on his side, fighting against her friends for a man she realizes no one ever really knew.
1. Last Midnight

"You're mad, Harry!" Hermione stared at her best friend with wide, unbelieving eyes. She'd told herself that he was grieving. He'd known Dumbledore a lot better than she did, was much closer to him, and she felt very strongly that people had the right to grieve how ever they needed to. But that didn't go as far as murder.

"Am I?" He growled back darkly. "I'm so glad you noticed!"

No one else was saying anything to back her up, determined faces looking back with hard expressions. They wanted this. This wasn't Harry. This wasn't like him at all. He was taking the bottled grief from his parents, Cedric, Sirius, and Dumbledore- to release on one man who was only responsible for the one. And no one was stopping him, looking to him as the new leader.

But she looked around the parlor desperately anyway, for a quiver of doubt on anyone's face. At this point, she'd even take George and his terrible ear related puns. But even his face was blank of care or moral, his side with a painful lack of twin. She'd expected her Head of House, the woman she had looked up to for the past seven years, to speak against this. But the woman was refusing to look at any of them, silent tears tripping down her cheek for her lost friend.

"What about our mission from Dumbledore?" She begged. "We need to go and do that, you know that. It's what he would have wanted."

"We'll go," Harry told her flatly. " _After_ we kill him."

Hermione looked to the floor at the barely conscious man she had known since she entered the Wizarding World at the age of eleven. His face was barely recognizable through the streaks of blood and dirt, pain etched on the parts she could see. He was looking back at her with frighteningly calm eyes. As if he had expected nothing else from her, trying to save him. And as if he expected nothing less from her friends for trying to condemn him.

"This is murder," she whispered in emotional agony.

Harry's face was unyielding. "It's nothing more than he would deserve."

Dumbledore was dead, Harry having watched him be killed by the man she was inexplicably trying to save. Harry had gone back to the Dursleys until his birthday, when he inherited Potter Manor, and Snape was among the Death Eaters who attacked on the move from Surrey to Devon. They'd lost Fred that night. Snape had been hit by a curse from Mr. Weasley's wand and fell, to be captured by the Order. Snape had said nothing, refusing to speak even an insult since his capture. Harry and the Order were going to kill him.

"Then do it and be done with it," Remus said from somewhere behind Hermione. She turned around, her frantic eyes finding his, and she knew he agreed with her. But she also knew he wouldn't say anything to Harry the way she did. Just like he never spoke against James.

"Too quick," Mad Eye Moody said. "Death Eater deserves a Death Eater death. D'you think if it were any of us taken by them, they'd just kill us quickly?"

There were murmurs through the small crowd. Murmurs of agreement. "Right then," Harry agreed.

Hermione grabbed Harry's arm. "Harry! This is torturing another human being, we're talking about. Torturing someone we've known for seven years."

Harry jerked his arm out of her grasp, glaring with murderous eyes at his soon-to-be victim. "He's no more a person than Voldemort." Professor Snape hissed at the mention of the name and Harry's face twisted into a sadistic grin. "Did that hurt, Snivellous? Does it hurt to hear your master's name?"

Hermione wished she had never told him about the name's affect on those with the Dark Mark. Harry spit in the face of the man at his feet, nodding to Mad-Eye and Kingsley to take him away to a room they had warded for his imprisonment. Hermione tried to stop them, taking a quick step forward that was foiled by Ron's strong arms around her waist to keep her in place. She struggled, hitting Ron wherever she could and trying to get away from him.

"No! Harry! Please, don't do this."

He ignored her. "Tomorrow," he said. "Tomorrow, we watch him die. We watch him feel the pain we've all felt with our losses. With Dumbledore's."

The actual cheers were disgusting. People genuinely wanting this. People she had looked up to and loved and respected, applauding the soon torture of a man. Good or not, he was a man. Didn't they see that this was making them just as evil? Just as horrible as those nasty monsters from Voldemort's side? Even those monsters were still human.

Hermione scratched and clawed to get out of Ron's grip until Kingsley and Mad-Eye returned with satisfied looks on their faces, then Ron let her slump to the ground in grievance for what was to come.

"How could you?" She asked Harry as people began trickling out of the large room.

"How could I?" He repeated in rage. "How can you defend him after all he's done? You've always defended him, and even now when you've been proven wrong you still do? Do you have to be right all the time that you fight it like this?"

She stood up. "You want me to say I was wrong? Fine. I was wrong. But so are you. Torturing him won't change the fact that they're all dead, Harry. Fred, Cedric, your parents, Sirius, Dumbledore. Nothing is going to bring them back, and if you go through with this you'll be no better."

There was a resounding slap around the room that made the last few people stop at the door in shock, looking back to see Hermione's head snapped to the side and her hands cradling her cheek. She looked at Harry, who was staring at his own hand in the same shock as everyone else, with narrowed, fiery eyes. Then she stormed out, not seeing a man follow her.

"Hermione!" He called, but she didn't slow her step. He ran forward to catch up with her, trying to touch her arm to get her attention. He didn't expect to see the anger he did when she whirled around. "Are you okay?"

"You said nothing," she accused in an enraged tone, her voice rising in the empty and silent hallway. This floor only had a few people on it, the two of them included. "You don't want this any more than I do, but you did _nothing_!"

Remus' eyes held their usual self hatred. "I know. But what did you expect me to do? He wouldn't have listened to me anymore than he did you. James, Sirius, Lily, they're all gone. He-he's all I have left of any of them."

"Then you're a coward, Remus Lupin." He recoiled, never having heard that outside of his own mind. But of course, as always, she was right. "I hate you," she bit out, turning around and slamming a door down the corridor.

*

That night, she went to the room she knew the professor to be locked in. She couldn't open the door, the wards being put up by Mad-Eye and several other very powerful Aurors. While she thought she could reconstruct them, removing them was entirely different. But there was a hole in the door with two bars there to keep anything terribly large getting through. She wasn't sure what they were thinking of when they did that, but considering the level of paranoia and hatred Moody was consumed with- there was no telling. But he could hear and see her she was sure.

"Professor?" She called as loud as she dared. No answer. For a moment, she was afraid they'd already done it. But then there was a groan and a gravelly voice.

"Even this close to death, you cannot leave me alone with your incessant chatter." His face came into view of the light protruding from her wand. "Is this to be the first wave of torture, Miss Granger?"

She bit her lip from forming a grin of relief. He was definitely not dead if he was still being his snarky self. "How are you feeling?"

An eyebrow of his raised just barely and she reddened. "Right, stupid question."

"Well, they say the first step is admittance."

In a quieter voice she asked, "Is anything broken?"

He didn't say anything for a moment, and she didn't think he was going to. "Why are you here, Miss Granger? You can do nothing for me. You haven't wronged me in some extreme way for you to come seeking last minute forgiveness. This is nothing more than a way to ease your misplaced guilt by saying you came to see me before I die."

"It isn't right."

"I killed Albus Dumbledore," he said flatly and with no hint of apology in his voice. "Why are you struggling so hard to stop it if you already know you can't. If you couldn't, close to Potter as you are, then nothing else could."

She knew he was right. She knew this had to be Voldemort- his anger and darkness seeping through the mental bond he and Harry shared. The boy who saved her from the mountain troll would never even consider this. Would never imagine torturing another person- murderer or not. At the very least Peter Pettigrew was proof of that.

"There has to be something," she said in a whispered, leaning against the door. "I have to get through to him somehow."

"I ask again, Miss Granger. Why are you here?"

Hermione didn't say anything, sitting on the cold floor and trying to think of how to save the most hated man in Britain- perhaps even more hated than Voldemort himself. If Voldemort was still a man. Perhaps it was wrong that she wanted to save him. Maybe it was right for her to let things go the way Harry and the Order wanted it. But she'd learned a long time ago not to trust things by appearances, Snape himself had taught her that.

"I was the one who set your robes on fire," she said, remembering how awful she'd felt about it afterwards when they found that he'd been trying to save Harry. "Our first year? I thought you were the one trying to curse his broom."

He didn't say anything.

"And I was the one who stole the Polyjuice Potion ingredients our second year."

"You're insulting my intelligence by assuming I didn't already know these things," his voice said, tight and forced from pain. The Order hadn't exactly been gentle when obtaining him. "You were the only one with half enough intelligence to do either at that age."

It was the only pseudo compliment he'd ever paid her. It made her feel incredibly angry with herself that she wasn't bright enough to figure a way out of this. She couldn't take everyone in a duel. Merlin, she wasn't sure if she could take half of them in a duel. She didn't have enough time to deconstruct Moody's wards to help Snape escape, and if she did there was no telling either of them would get out of the Manor alive anyway.

"We used a Time Turner," she said. "To help Sirius escape Professor Flitwick's office. I'd been using it to get to all my classes."

There was a pained sound from the man inside, whom she could see as he dragged himself closer to the door and past a moonlit window- bathing him in the silvery light. Was he laughing? He was, chuckling in a way that sounded like he was choking. She didn't want to think about what he could be choking on, but she could guess that it was blood. Harry himself had been particularly overzealous.

"You know," he rasped, "I considered all possibilities, I even dreamed a few that were impossible, but I can honestly say that didn't even cross my mind. Lily used one our third year, I should have remembered."

"Lily?" Hermione asked, only able to think of one. "Lily Potter?"

She could see, just barely, Professor Snape grimace. "It was Lily Evans then, but yes. You always reminded me of her, much more than Potter. She too had the insane obsession with knowing everything. It was probably why the two of us were friends."

Hermione was startled, realizing none of them really knew much of anything about Harry's mum, _or_ the mysterious Potions Master who always proved to be more than expected.

"You were friends with Harry's mum?"

"Go away, Miss Granger. Let me have my peace in the last hours I am to be allowed it."

His voice seemed haunted, and faraway as though he was somewhere else. She didn't move, but she didn't say anything again. Minutes passed.

"Is that Potter's doing?"

Hermione started, looking at him with a confused expression. "What?"

He sounded exasperated at having to explain. "The large bruise forming on your cheek, girl. Is that _Potter's_ doing?"

She frowned, only just remembering the slap, and raised her hand to her face- wincing at its tenderness. _It was an accident_ , was her immediate thought. _Harry would never_. But he had. And even if she knew it was an accident, it was on purpose at the same time.

"Yes."

"And I suppose you're going to tell me as well that he didn't mean to?"

Hermione sighed to herself. "No," she said quietly. "I'm not going to tell you that."

He looked pleasantly surprised, like she'd said exactly what he wanted her to. "Lily said that," he told her. "Just before her wedding day. She need Bruise Paste, and I refused to give it to her. She never spoke to me again."

"James-" she didn't know what to say, looking through the opening in the door with wide eyes. But Professor Snape wasn't looking at her, staring ahead at the opposite wall and still in his memories.

"It was only once," he admitted. "But Lily was always too forgiving. No matter what it was I did, or Potter for that matter, she never failed to give a second chance. Except that once. We never quarreled often, but when we did it was always explosive. I think you're familiar with the legends of her temper, and you've seen hints of mine."

Hermione nodded.

"I was angry. She was always defending Potter, and now he'd hit her and she was still going to marry him. I told her to leave and never come back, so she didn't and I was too prideful to go after her."

Why didn't Sirius ever tell Harry Lily was friends with Professor Snape? Rather, she supposed she could understand that, but why hadn't Remus? Neither of them ever said much of anything about Lily. But now she was finding out they were friends, though from the look on the man's face, he'd felt more for her than friendship.

"Why did you kill him, professor?"

There was a noise down the hall and they both jumped, glancing that way even though Hermione was the only one in the position to see anything. All she could make out were three forms, but she could hear Moody's stump and walking stick hitting the stone floor. _Shuffle, thump, click, shuffle, thump, click._

Behind her, in the warded room, Professor Snape forced himself to stand and Hermione knew it was to save his dignity. He would be waiting. No begging. No asking to be spared. No excuses, or death bed admissions. No bargains or petitions. And she had never admired or respected him more; an admitted murderer.

She turned around to meet his eyes and he lifted his head in his way. And he spoke. "I am no longer your professor, Hermione."

Moody, Kingsley, and Bill were there now and the first snarled at her. "Move aside, girlie."

"No," she said. "This is wrong. Kingsley, Bill, you _know_ it is. Bill, you're about to get married and perhaps one day have kids. Is this how you want them to think of you? Is this a story you want your name in?"

His freshly scarred face was set hard, his jaw tightened. "As a seeker of justice? As one who stands against murderers like him? You're damn right I do."

They moved towards the door, Kingsley physically grabbing her the way Ron had the night before and moving her out of the way. Hermione shot a curse, not realizing when she did that her wand had been at the ready since she'd heard them coming down the corridor. Kingsley dodged the golden jet that would have stunned, almost falling. Bill grabbed her from behind, resisting her struggling as Kingsley tried to take her wand and she kicked him.

"No!" She pleaded. "Please! Don't do this. Lock him up if you must, but don't do this. Think of what you're doing. Think of what you're asking and letting Harry do! This isn't like him."

Her wand flew from her hand with a disarming spell from Moody. "That's enough, girl."

Hermione felt tears falling as she fought more, though it was mostly automatic. She knew she couldn't get out of Bill's hold as Moody and Kingsley unwarded the room and retrieved its prisoner. Professor- no, Severus- wasn't fighting. Though, the two Aurors had strong holds on him. But he looked at her with a message in his expression that she couldn't make out.

She and Bill followed them into the parlor from the night before, and only then did he let go of her without leaving her side. Hermione avoided Remus' eyes trying to catch hers, watching as Moody dragged Severus across room and tossed him down at Harry's feet with an anticipating grin- that twisted up his already deeply scarred face into something hideous. Severus looked up, black eyes narrowed at Harry in challenge- as if to say, 'Do your worst.' His greasy black hair fell against his sallow skin like thick ropes, his robes were torn and somewhat bloodied, and his determination had not faltered. And neither had Hermione's.

As Harry raised his wand to the man at his feet, Hermione lunged forward- falling to her knees between Harry and Severus, her body shielded the latter from the former's wand. Harry's face screwed up in anger and around the room, people gasped.

"Move, Hermione," he gritted out, his grasp on his wand visibly tightening.

"I won't."

His green eyes were almost black, darkening by the second. "I don't want to hurt you," he tried instead.

"Then don't, but you'll have to go through me to get to him. This is wrong. I know it, you know it, everyone knows that this isn't what Dumbledore would have wanted. Why are you all doing nothing? We are supposed to be fighting for the Light. How can we do that if you are all so eager to resort to Dark at the first chance?"

She looked around the room, to different faces, but none agreed. Remus stood in the front, behind Harry, with a sad shake of his head. He would do nothing either. Her face hardened.

"And you dare call Slytherin the cowards."

At that, Harry shot a curse and Hermione gritted her teeth rather than cry out at the pain- his face dark and shadowed. "Get away from him, Hermione. Please!"

"I WILL NOT!" She shouted, her voice projecting and filling the room. "I am doing what I believe to be right. Guilty or innocent, he was once someone you all respected. Dark or not, he is a human being. If this is who we are, in this case where it truly matters, then maybe we deserve to lose this war. That is what _I_ believe and I will not move from this spot."

Hermione looked back at Snape, who slowly looked back at her with barely a nod. She knew it was a nod of permission; a nod telling her it was okay. That he could handle it, and she could leave. But it only made her harden her resolve, looking back to Harry with fire in her eyes.

"If you want to kill him, you'll have to kill me too."

Harry looked hurt, betrayed, and confused. Then he hardened his jaw and he lifted his head decisively. And she saw a jet of green. Then nothing.

 **A/N: Soooo, I really hope you guys like this. I'm so proud of it. I was inspired by Pocahontas (I don't think I quite spelled that right). The Disney one. I have the bad habit of going on Youtube and finding Harry Potter videos with various pairings and songs, and I found quite a few with the scene from Pocahontas where she uses that last line on her father to save John Smith. Frankly, I never liked John Smith, but I do like the movie. I was originally going to make this a story, but I hadn't written anything on it for a while and I hadn't posted it, so I tweaked it a bit to post for my birthday. Today I am officially 21, woohoo! Except, I'm not much of a drinker, I can't really afford to go get wine coolers or even a decent beer that doesn't taste like horse piss, and the only thing we have is bourbon. I don't like hard liquor. Oh well.**

 **The title is actually a song from Into the Woods called 'The Last Midnight'. I urge you all to listen to it as it very much suits this one shot. I like to listen to the Into the Woods soundtrack while I'm writing. Please let me know if you like it! I was going to have her figure out that Dumbledore's death was planned, but I thought her sacrifice would be more powerful if she didn't know. What do you think?**

 **Dasvidanya, Mia.**


	2. Stay With Me

Of course she would try to save him. She was too much like Lily not to. And he was too much like James, no matter how much Dumbledore argued that he wasn't. Severus didn't move from his spot, though his pride ruffled at the idea of him being at Potter's feet and at his mercy. Once again he lamented that he'd been unable to help nurture her mind the way she needed. He regretted having to treat her the way he had. Especially when she looked at him with tears and a tortured expression.

"This is murder," she insisted to deaf ears.

"It's nothing more than he would deserve."

For once, they were in agreement. He'd killed Dumbledore. Albus, he'd killed Albus. He'd betrayed Lily, who'd been the only reason he kept going. He betrayed Minerva, who was the only true mother he'd ever known. He'd killed Albus, who never failed to lose faith in him. He should have refused. He should have let Draco do it. He should have killed Lucius when he'd had the chance years ago.

He could feel everyone's eyes on him. It had been a long night. He hadn't meant to his Weasley's ear. He was aiming for Lupin. Speaking of, the wolf stepped forward towards the girl's side. Granger.

"Then do it and be done with it."

Severus could see her look to the werewolf with hopeful eyes, but she was a fool. The wolf was a coward, Gryffindor or no. Not like Granger, who probably only knew fear in theory. Betrayal was a foreign concept. Something from a book that she'd only ever heard in stories. No doubt she expected his 'defection' as much as Potter had. He knew what she'd done to her family, probably being one of the only ones. She would never tell her friends. She wouldn't want them to worry about her. Lily was like that too.

He had been thinking, drifting to his thoughts when the name- Voldemort- snapped him back with a shot of pain through his arm. He felt the magic slither through his veins, not quite as painful as the Cruciatus, but worse than getting the Mark.

"Did that hurt, Snivellous?" Potter leered at him. "Does it hurt to hear your master's name?"

 _To hell with destroying that monster_ , he reared in his mind, _I'm going to kill him_. He could see Granger's face as he was pulled away, guilty. She'd discovered the name's affect on the Marked and told him. And now she regretted it. She shouldn't. He deserved much worse.

"Dumbledore isn't here to get you out of it this time," Mad Eye growled gleefully in his ear as he was dragged down a corridor. "No more cowering and hiding."

"You'd know all about cowering, wouldn't you, Mad Eye," Severus said finally, as smoothly as he could. "Don't forget that I was there when they pulled you out of Crouch's trunk. Tell me, how does it feel that he played yourself better than you could?"

Moody's response elicited a groan from Severus as he could feel two of his ribs grinding together. He gritted his teeth to keep from making a sound when they threw him forcefully into the room. Okay. He'd been through worse. Where was he?

Potter has just turned seventeen. Seventeen, he'd come of age and inherit his parents assets. Including his father's childhood home, Potter Manor. Of the properties Lily and Potter had owned, that he could remember, Potter Manor was closest. Okay. He was in Devon.

What was near Devon? Near Potter Manor? From throwaway comments Albus made he knew it was surrounded by wood. He could do wood. He was a runner, you couldn't be a scrawny kid in rags in Spinners End without being one. If he could get out of the manor, he was home free. How was he going to get out?

Severus sighed. The wards were too strong for wandless magic. And then he'd have to navigate and that was assuming that there were no other precautions. Potter wouldn't have thought that far, but Moody would have. Granger would have, though she might not have said anything if no one else did first. Even if by some miracle he did get out, he wasn't sure how far he'd get with severely broken ribs and a busted leg from his initial capture.

"Professor?" The soft, quiet voice made him look over to the door from the opposite side of the room. Of course she would come. Damned Gryffindors.

"Even this close to death, you cannot leave me alone with your incessant chatter. Is this to be the first wave of torture, Miss Granger?"

He could see her face through a small opening in the door, illuminated by light protruding from a source he couldn't see- likely her wand. She looked relieved to be on the receiving end of his acerbic tongue again. Perhaps she thought they'd already killed him. No. Moody was secretly nearly as dramatic Albus or the Dark Lord, he wouldn't have given up the show that was expected the next morning.

"How are you feeling?... Right, stupid question."

"Well, they say the first step is admittance."

She was so much like Lily. He had found her on more than one occasion, asleep on her books at the same table he and Lily used to frequent. He would move her homework so she didn't smudge or spill the ink. It was odd. She was muggleborn. Neither of them had any remote relation to her, but Potter was too much James and Lily. Where he should have been Severus'. But Granger, well, Lily's mother had had brown hair, and Severus' mother had had brown eyes. If he shut everything else out he could almost pretend she was his and Lily's. The child they should have had.

"Is anything broken?"

But she wasn't. Lily had chosen Potter over him. She was dead. Albus was dead. And soon, so too would Severus be.

"Why are you here, Miss Granger? You can do nothing for. You haven't wronged me in some extreme way for you to come seeking last minute forgiveness. This is nothing more than a way to ease your misplaced guilt by saying you came to see me before I die."

Very good, he commended himself. You didn't choke talking about your impending death. Severus wished she would go away. She reminded him too much of Lily. And he both, wanted Lily to be his last thought, and yet wanted peace that her memory wouldn't bring.

"It isn't right."

"I killed Albus Dumbledore," he told her. "Why are you struggling so hard to stop it if you already know you can't? If you couldn't, close to Potter as you are, then nothing else could."

Maybe if he was sure there wasn't an alarm on the door, he could open the door the good old fashioned way- by trying to pick the lock and breaking it when he realized he couldn't.

Then she was telling him her transgressions against him. All of which he knew of. Of course he knew she'd set his robes on fire. He'd been impressed at the time and he was still. Yes he knew she'd stolen the Polyjuice ingredients their second year. It was Potter and Weasley that had provided the distraction and she was the only one half intelligent enough. It didn't hurt that a month later he'd been called to the hospital wing to help put her half cat form to rights. He hadn't laughed so hard in years, having to take ten minutes before being able to think clearly on how to fix her.

"You're insulting my intelligence by assuming I didn't already know these things. You were the only one with half enough intelligence to do either at that age."

Lily could have. Lily, the brightest with of her age as was Granger.

"We used a Time Turner," she said quietly. "To help Sirius escape Professor Flitwick's office. I'd been using it to get to all my classes."

Severus laughed at his own oversight. Why hadn't he thought of that? "You know," he stood to try and get closer to her. If he couldn't be near Lily before his death... "I considered all possibilities, I even dreamed a few that were impossible, but I can honestly say that didn't even cross my mind. Lily used one during our third year. I should have remembered."

"Lily?" She asked in a whisper, obviously to herself before asking louder. "Lily Potter?"

Potter? No. Oh, that was right. She had chosen Potter. Lily Potter. Severus frowned to himself. "I was Lily Evans then, but yes. You always reminded me of her, much more than Potter. She too had the insane obsession with knowing everything. It was probably why the two of us were friends."

Though, he'd always been worse. Lily, when confronted with the mystery of Remus Lupin's disappearances, trusted Lupin that he'd tell her if and when he was ready. She never approved of Severus' sneaking about and trying to find out. They had very different methods of knowing everything.

"You were friends with Harry's mum?"

Harry's mum. Potter's mother. Lily. That's what she knew her as. And yet, that wasn't even a scrape of who Lily was. He wouldn't be able to set Granger right on who Lily was in the short time they had. Lily had too much substance to her.

"Go away, Miss Granger. Let me have my peace in the last hours I am to be allowed it."

She didn't move, not even marginally, and Severus looked over to her. Her hair was darker than the brown Lily's mother's had been. And her eyes were a lighter brown than the near black his own mother's were. Her nose was far too straight and small too be from his, and not upturned enough to be from Lily's. She was Granger; born to two dentist muggles that neither he nor Lily held any relations to. How silly he'd been.

"Is that Potter's doing?" He expected, upon seeing the purple on her face, to be filled with the same rage he'd held when looking at a similar mark on Lily's face. But he only felt resigned.

"What?"

Her feigned ignorance made him grit his teeth. "The large bruise forming on your cheek, girl. Is that _Potter's_ doing?"

He could see her reach up to her face and wince at it. No doubt it had been about him. He recalled overhearing more than once, her defending him to her two idiot friends. And with the seething anger he'd witnessed from Potter before being dragged away...

"Yes."

"And I suppose you're going to tell me as well that he didn't mean to?" Lily had been forgiving to a fault, but Granger was more rational in that area if only slightly. So he was very pleased to hear her say no. "Lily said that. Just before her wedding day. She needed Bruise Paste, and I refused to give it to her. She never spoke to me again."

It had taken him months to get her to talk to him again after calling her a mudblood. Months during the summer of waiting outside her house for her to hear him out. In killing damned heat, in freezing snow, at their special spot under the tree in the park. And then he messed up again.

"It was only once, but Lily was always too forgiving. No matter what it was I did, or Potter for matter, she never failed to give a second chance. Except that once. We never quarreled often, but when we did it was always explosive. I think you're familiar with the legends of her temper, and you've seen hints of mine."

Lily had a temper, oh, did she ever. Severus understood why Potter lived to annoy her if he couldn't charm her. She was never more beautiful than when she was angry, her fiery hair flung over her shoulder and her emerald eyes narrowed at you. It could take anyone's breath away.

"I was angry," he told her. "She was always defending Potter, and now he'd hit her and she was still going to marry him." _And not me_ "I told her to leave and never come back, so she didn't and I was too prideful to go after her."

The girl didn't respond. Neither of them said anything for a moment and he could see her expression of deep thought. Likely wondering why no one knew he had been friends with Lily. That had been his one condition to anything Albus requested of him. Was that no one ever knew, and the surviving Marauders hated him too much to tell them anyway.

"Why did you kill him, professor?"

He thought about telling her. About admitting the conspiracy, the oaths, and his vow. But he was cut off by approaching people. He'd be damned if he was sitting in pain or begging when they came for him, and he forced himself through the pain to stand and lean on the wall. He could still feel his ribs grinding against each other, could smell his own blood.

Once he was standing, he could see the pride in her eyes- the ones that were too light to be his or his mother's. Pride at him. Pride that he would do anything to see from Lily once again.

"I am no longer your professor, Hermione."

It was the only thing he could give her. The last thing he had that he could offer before he died. The offer of being equals. She'd perhaps always been his equal. Even if she was far from being Lily's. But then, Lily had no equal.

*

Once again, he found himself at Potter's feet and mercy. And this time, armed with the memory of Lily that at least one other person might have a hint of, he faced his fate with narrowed eyes- looking up at the boy. He raised his wand. And the was a blur. And Hermione was between them, pleading with her friend once again with eyes that were too light.

"Move, Hermione."

"I won't."

Lily would have been proud, and so would James, though for different children. Potter demanded she move again, trying a softer approach, and once again she refused. The first curse was fired at an insult from the girl, and he demanded again.

"I WILL NOT! I am doing what I believe to be right. Guilty or innocent, he was once someone you all respected. Dark or not, he is a human being. If this is who we are, in this case where it truly matters, then maybe we deserve to lose this war. That is what _I_ believe and I will not move from this spot."

She looked at him, and he nodded. _Step aside, you silly girl_ , he thought. _Move or he'll do it. You know he will. Leave me to my fate. The fate I have chosen_.

"If you want to kill him, you'll have to kill me too."

Severus' eyes widened at her statement and he lunged forward to shove her aside as a jet of green shot from Potter's wand and enveloped them both. Green. Like Lily's eyes.

Lily.

 **A/N: So here is Severus' POV of the first chapter. I was very tempted to make this its own and not an addition, but oh well. I am thinking of adding a third to show the Order's reactions to finding out that Dumbledore made Severus do it. If I do it, it will be called 'Your Fault'. Each of the three are song titles from Into the Woods, which I listen to while I write. It's something like my muse. I really hope you liked it. Thank you, AdrianaSnapeHouse for your ideas. I hope I did it justice. And thank you for everyone's reviews.**

 **Dasvidanya, Mia.**


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